Illinois this week earned the honor of becoming the first state in 2011 to sock it to taxpayers, passing a tax hike the size of Lake Michigan. Citizens cried out, legislators deflected, but the most interesting response came from neighboring Wisconsin, where newly elected GOP Gov. Scott Walker had three words for Illinois businesses: “Escape to Wisconsin.”(emphasis mine)

Note the lack of numbers. Otherwise people might get the crazy idea that Illinois legislators did the responsible thing for the residents of their state. Who realize now is not the time to be laying off more teachers, cutting funds for alternative energy research, laying off firefighters and police or other public workers – whose wages are spent at businesses Republicans swear they care about. WI Gov. Scott Walker Begs Illinoisans To ‘Escape To Wisconsin’ Where Taxes Are Actually Higher

Conservatives like Walker have insisted on using the figure that Illinois is increasing taxes by a whopping 66 percent. While this is factually accurate, it’s misleading as it makes the tax increase seem much bigger than it actually is. Illinois tax rates will only go from 3 to 5 percent (hence 66 percent increase), representing a total increase in tax rates of just 2 percent. This will allow Illinois to solve a massive $15 billion budget deficit without gutting state programs. But even with this increase, tax rates for individuals will still be lower than in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has different tax brackets; the lowest income rate if you make over $11,000 is 6.15 percent. The highest rate is 7.75 percent. Bloomberg noted this yesterday:

Absent from Walker’s sales pitch was the fact that Wisconsin’s top income tax rates remain higher than Illinois even under the increase … Walker hasn’t yet proposed lowering the state’s income or corporate tax rates.

But this didn’t stop Fox New host Neil Cavuto yesterday from insisting that Illinois is experiencing a “tax storm.”

Neil Cavuto and Fox are to accuracy in reporting what a flim-flam man is to easy riches.

Sarah Palin’s “blood libel” remark filled in a few spaces on the Republican reaction to any tragedy. It painted Republicans as the real victims. It exaggerated any harm done to Palin or conservatives. It exploited a tragedy to paint moderates as evil extremists. It gave Palin yet another opportunity to vent her spiteful petty attitude on the American public. What might have been lost in Palin’s remarks are worth noting. Those who did not, probably now know the history of the term blood libel. Palin’s hijacking the term for political reasons is especially egregious since Palin once belonged to a church who thought Jews needed to be saved from Judaism,

Palin seems to disdain intellectualism, she’s a vociferous opponent of gun control and she attended a fundamentalist church that hosted Jews for Jesus, which seeks to convert Jews to Christianity. (Palin apparently sat through a speech by a leader of the group in which he said terrorist attacks on Israel were punishment for Israelis’ failure to accept Jesus as the Messiah.)

I’ve lost count of the number of pundits who have made the case that Palin bears no direct blame for the Tucson massacre ( Digby, James Fallows at The Atlantic, Daily Kos and myself to name a few). All premised on the fact the murderer was probably suffering some mental problems and the logical fallacy that a few gun sights on a map do not a murderer make. What does Palin do. She comes along and says we’re wrong. Words can make people murder,

Then she went on to say that “journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.”

The narcissism required, on a day the nation is commemorating the Arizona shooting victims, to put her own sense of victimhood front and center, is stunning. The “blood libel” idiocy may be the worst of it, especially given that Giffords herself is Jewish. But that’s not the only thing wrong with her performance. Hilariously, after all the times she’s mocked President Obama for using a teleprompter, you can see a teleprompter screen reflected in her eyeglasses throughout much of her Facebook chat. Seeing the flickering teleprompter in her eyes is eerie; it’s where some flicker of her soul should be, but you don’t see any. Looking into Palin’s eyes, you see a blazing, self-pitying anger that’s shocking, even for the self-described “pit bull in lipstick.”